Welcome to this special edition of benchmark. For those of you reading this at the NAFEMS World Congress in San Diego, we sincerely hope you enjoy the show (and as I always say in the Congress edition, mine’s a single malt, if you see me at the bar…). For everyone else, we’ll see you at the next one!

This issue leads with an exclusive article from Simulia, Platinum Sponsor of the World Congress, on their revolutionary “Living Heart” project. The project, in their own words, aims to set the stage for transforming healthcare using simulation based solutions. It’s a fascinating insight into how what we do can have a real positive impact on society at large.

The rest of this issue is given over to a special focus on composites, and has been put together with the assistance of the NAFEMS Composites Working Group. A number of articles and opinion pieces on material properties, composites research, modelling of composite materials, an overview of the most popular available software and more are included, and I’d like to thank the review panel who managed to pull the articles together – Ronald Krueger from NIA and T. Kim Parnell from Parnell Engineering & Consulting - who have worked some long voluntary hours to help produce this issue.

As well as the San Diego World Congress (which is either happening now if you’re reading this there, or happened in June…), the NAFEMS event program keeps getting stronger. Our presence in the Americas continues to grow, with a number of new seminars and training courses planned for the coming year, in order to enable the analysis community to engage more fully with NAFEMS in the region. The latter part of 2015 also sees a number of European conferences on MBS, SPDM and CFD being held, as well as a strong global line-up of seminars and training courses. To add to this, our 2016 Regional Conference programme has just been announced, with conferences taking place around the globe next year.

Please remember that this is your magazine. We are always delighted to receive your feedback and suggestions, as well as any articles or topics you wish to submit or see covered in future issues.

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